The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

‘I just understand that people can make mistakes,’ I said.  

‘Someone could do something that you think is terrible. Immoral, even! 

But it wouldn’t be what defined her…’

Because, yes, Gaby Carter has made a few mistakes herself, but she’s aiming to fix them, to make amends and to make some big changes in her life.

Step one in that process: she’ll become a cheerleader for the Woodsmen football team.  She’ll go up against more than 150 beautiful, talented women to get a spot on the coveted roster, but she’ll have to fight her way through mean girls, injuries, and tears to do it...

Step two: Gaby will show her family and friends that she’s smart, strong, and successful, no matter how she may have behaved in the past, no matter how little they may think of her.   Or how little she may think of herself...

Step three: she will not fall in love with the wrong guy again, not this time.  Definitely not with Ben Matthews, the handsome, single-dad Woodsmen football coach who is totally off-limits, in so many ways.  Even if in so many other ways, he’s just perfect...

Step four: she’ll work past all the bumps and bruises that life keeps throwing at her, at her body and at her heart…

And in the end, Gaby will find the happy ending for herself, for Ben, and for his little girl.  It’s not going to be easy—but it will be worth it!

The Hardest Cut

Jamie Bennett

Copyright © 2021 by Jamie Bennett

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review.  Please contact the author at [email protected].

This is a work of fiction.  While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

Book cover by Angela Haddon Book Cover Designs.

Chapter 1

Shoulders back.  Flip your hair.  Lick your teeth so your lips will slide.  Slight knee tuck, hips tilted, fists on waist.  Chin angled down twenty degrees, flip your hair again.  Smile.

The faces swiveled to stare at me and the light shone down full in my face.

Smile!

“I’m Gabriella, but you can call me Gaby!” I said, and slowly rotated my angled chin back and forth to meet the eyes of each judge.  “I’m a native Michigander, I’m twenty-four years old, and I’m a real estate agent who loves to dance and loves football!  Go Woodsmen!”  I shook my hands in the air like I had invisible pompoms.

“Thank you, Gaby,” the head judge said into her microphone.  As the squad’s chief choreographer, she was the highest-ranking person here; the head cheerleading coach didn’t bother to come to the preliminary auditions.  “Next.”

I stepped back as the eyes moved to the next candidate, my heart pounding so hard I wondered if they could see it thumping through the spandex that covered my chest.  I kept smiling, though, and clapped when that woman finished her introduction.  She had told the judges that she was there for the fifth year in a row and would do anything—anything—to become a Woodsmen football cheerleader.

And I knew that she meant it.  I had heard her on her phone in the parking lot where we had all gathered in the pre-dawn darkness, telling someone (maybe her mom) that if she didn’t get past the preliminary audition today, she wasn’t responsible for what she would do next.  When she got back into line next to me now, I tried to give her a few extra inches of space.  Just in case.

Woman after woman stepped forward and I tried to stay positive about my chances.  The Woodsmen squad was traditionally made up of thirty dancers and I assumed that all the cheerleaders from last season who wanted to return would make the team again.  My guess was that there would be only five openings for the new people trying out today, since two of the dancers from last year were pregnant, one was moving, one was going back to school, and one had left the team “for personal reasons.”  The Woodsmen football fan sites gossiped that her “personal reasons” were deciding to take out both her hair extensions and her breast implants, leaving her much flatter in two key areas.

Five openings, and how many women were here to try out?  With number one thirty-seven currently introducing herself, I knew my odds weren’t good.

I pushed my own chest forward a little, although it was already prominently encased in a tangerine-colored bra top.  Even with the spotlight off me, the rhinestones still sparkled some against the spandex.  I had chosen this color so the judges would already be able to picture me in the famous Woodsmen orange, dancing on the sidelines of the football field with the rest of the squad.  I caught one of the judges eyeing me but I pretended not to see.  I just tossed my hair again and smiled.

By the time that the introductions were done, my cheeks and lips ached from overuse.  I hadn’t been smiling much in the last few months, and my facial muscles weren’t primed for the workout I was giving them today.  But there was no time to worry about that, because small-group dance auditions were next.  “Prepare a short sequence,” the directions on the extensive application had instructed us, which wasn’t a lot of information.

I had skulked around online, reading what former cheerleaders and applicants had said, to find out the secret of what the judges were really looking for in the few beats of music we were given.  I had learned that I would need shake what Mother Nature had given me to advance past preliminaries, so when the song came on, I did.

Actually, I shook it so hard that I